Friday, 22 February 2013

Part XXVIII – On Candlelight, Classicism and Curiosity

This is part of a series discussing The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen. His sixth chapter is titled Pecuniary Canons of Taste.

We’ll finish Chapter
Six with this post. A while back we
noted how easy it is to increase one’s standard of living, but how difficult it
is to cut back. Any retrogression is viewed as ‘a grievous
violation of our human dignity.’ This doesn’t prevent us from going back
in time, however. Veblen points out that
for the past half dozen years or so (that would be in the 1890s, the Gilded Age,
indeed it still holds true today), candles have been the preferred source of
light at the well-appointed dinner table, chosen over oil, gas or electric
light. As it happens, candles were no
longer the most inexpensive source of domestic light as they were thirty years
previously. He points out that the light
they shed is of no use ‘for any other than a ceremonial illumination.’ Doesn’t he sound grumpy?

Veblen says that the
perception of beauty has also been warped by the desire for novelty: if something is ingenious or puzzling, a
curiosity, then it is alleged to be beautiful.
He names a number of exotic hand-wrought items which have no function
in a developed society, but rather than use his examples, I had another
idea. We sometimes tour grand houses
such as those owned by the National Trust and many of those homes include a ‘curio
cabinet’ just for the display of odd items picked up on their travels. The items will perhaps not have cost a great
deal at the point of acquisition, but they demonstrate wealth because of the
travel required to collect them.

Veblen moans about
this need for novelty in domestic and public architecture which, to be fair,
was pretty over the top in his day. In his view the
‘neglected’ sides and back of the buildings were their best features.

To polish off (ahem)
some more of Veblen’s examples of how our definition of beautiful is influenced
by the rules of conspicuous consumption, we’ll return to his earlier example of
a hand-wrought silver spoon. He tackles the Arts and Crafts movement and names
William Morris and John Ruskin as among those who highly valued hand-made
items. Of course, hand labour is the
most wasteful form of production in a machine age. In order to fulfil all the
pecuniary criteria, a hand-made object must display the highest level of skill
but may not be so perfect that one could mistake it for machine made. If it isn’t obviously expensive, it cannot be
beautiful.

Another example is Morris’s
Kelmscott Press. Veblen qualifies his
case as only applying to the economic question of book production.

“Even a scientific
periodical, with ostensibly no purpose but the most effective presentation
of matter with which its science is concerned, will concede so much to the
demands of this pecuniary beauty as to publish its scientific
discussions in old style type, on laid paper, and with uncut edges. But
books which are not ostensibly concerned with the effective presentation
of their contents alone, of course go farther in this direction. Here we
have a somewhat cruder type, printed on hand-laid, deckel-edged paper,
with excessive margins and uncut leaves, with bindings of a painstaking crudeness and elaborate ineptitude. The Kelmscott Press
reduced the matter to an absurdity — as seen from the point of view of
brute serviceability alone — by issuing books for modern use, edited with
the obsolete spelling, printed in black-letter, and bound in limp vellum
fitted with thongs. As a further characteristic feature which fixes the economic place of artistic book-making, there is the fact that these
more elegant books are, at their best, printed in limited editions. A
limited edition is in effect a guarantee — somewhat crude,it
is true — that this book is scarce and that it therefore is costly and
lends pecuniary distinction to its consumer.”

In this desire to
return to old-fashioned designs, Veblen believes

“the canon is to some
extent shaped in conformity to that secondary expression of the predatory
temperament, veneration for the archaic or obsolete, which in one of its
special developments is called classicism.”

This affinity for
archaic ideas is a theme he develops further in a later chapter. For now, it comes to my mind that for many
generations a ‘classical’ education was considered befitting of an upper class
gentleman. Veblen says he objects to
this canon of pecuniary repute and the relationship with classicism because

“It is a
regulative rather than a creative principle. It very rarely initiates
or originates any usage or custom directly. Its action is
selective only.”

Susan - I was referring to his lack of appreciation for candle light (obviously not a romantic), but I think anyone who is fighting the prevailing views in society will come across as sounding out of sorts.

Shelley, I loved your comment, you got exactly where I'm coming from, it's not about not having had children per se, it's about how to make the years count because so far they have whized by and I have been so unconscious and I'm almost 50 - I feel that I need to wake up.

About Me

I'm an American woman in my 60's, originally from Oklahoma, but now living in England. I write this blog mainly because I love to write, but also to share my experience of living abroad with others. I'm having a much bigger life than I ever imagined. I think it is one of the benefits of frugality, also of occasionally taking the scarier option.